Q: What do Aliens, Pit Pulls, Scantily Clad Adults and Children Bouncing Balls have in Common?

Q: What do Aliens, Pit Pulls, Scantily Clad Adults and Children Bouncing Balls have in Common?

A. They’re all impermissible advertising images for lawyers – at least somewhere in the U.S.

Last week, an article about restrictions on legal advertisements hit the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Nathan Koppel’s article, “Objection! Funny Legal Ads Draw Censure,” detailed attorney ads that are being struck down by state bar associations. His article focused predominantly on the Florida Bar, where pit bulls wearing spiked collars, “fierce tigers,” a “shark in attack mode” and the “sounds of children bouncing a ball” have all been found impermissible.

Most of these advertising attorneys are well aware of their bar associations’ views on advertising. And for those ads that may be considered outrageous by even the most liberal of individuals (check out Chicago’s “Life’s Short, Get a Divorce” ads), the attorneys running the ads now know that media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and MSNBC are going to talk about them. The Fetman Garland & Associates’ ad, “Life’s Short, Get a Divorce,” were removed due to alleged permit violations, NOT ethical rule violations but even so, they netted millions of dollars worth of controversial media coverage, brought in plenty of new clients, and landed Corri Fetman’s new gig as Playboy’s “Lawyer of Love,” who bares all this month. Now that, I believe, is a first. … Talk about return on investment.

I digress. Going back to Koppel’s article, what I found most intriguing is that Florida does permit the mundane, monotonous and downright humdrum images of “the scales of justice, a gavel, an eagle, columns, and a ‘plain unadorned set of law books'” in legal advertising.

So, I wonder how an eagle tossing a gavel from atop a column onto the scales of justice in an effort to tip scales weighted down by an unadorned set of law books would go over in a legal ad. Yes, I wonder.